The University of Chicago Appropriate Conduct at Home and Abroad: Forming and Reforming Imperialist Ideologies in Popular Dutc
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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO APPROPRIATE CONDUCT AT HOME AND ABROAD: FORMING AND REFORMING IMPERIALIST IDEOLOGIES IN POPULAR DUTCH AND BRITISH JUVENILE NOVELS, 1814-1879 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE BY NANA MARIE DIEDERICHS HOLTSNIDER CHICAGO, ILLINOIS AUGUST 2018 Copyright 2018 by Nana Holtsnider Table of contents Acknowledgments iv Abstract v Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Reforming female conduct at home: Deliberating colonial identity in early nineteenth-century domestic moral tales 28 Chapter 2: Mastering manhood abroad: Re-forming masculine conduct to overcome the limits of empire in early adventure novels 61 Chapter 3: Reforming Africans: Utilizing humanitarian conduct to foster paternalistic imperialism in later adventure tales 93 Conclusion: Encountering and Reforming Imperialism in Popular Juvenile Fiction 131 Appendix A: Timeline of significant events in the British and Dutch Empires, 1780-1910 136 Appendix B: Titles of popular Dutch juvenile novels with colonial content, 1814-1879 140 Appendix C: Brief biographical and bibliographical overview of main authors 143 Bibliography 148 iii Acknowledgments I would like to sincerely thank my dissertation committee: Loren Kruger, Sascha Ebeling, and Jolanda Vanderwal Taylor. I owe special acknowledgment and gratitude to my chair, Loren Kruger, for her guidance, thorough feedback, and willingness to delve into nineteenth-century juvenile Dutch literature. I am also grateful to Sarah Wenzel and the University of Chicago Library for assisting me with valuable resources from afar, as well as Heather Keenleyside for valuable insights. To my friends and fellow graduate students at the University of Chicago, I would particularly like to thank the following for their sustained encouragement: Chandani Patel, Monica Felix, Stephen Parkin, Jill Parkin, Katrina Powers, Brady Smith, Chloe Blackshear, and Brian Berry. For my early forays into comparative and Dutch literature, I thank my mentors at the University of Iowa: Rick Altman, Julie Hochstrasser, Sidney Huttner, and Alan Nagel; and fellow graduate students at the University of Colorado: Katina Rogers and Sarah Jane Bates Gray. Finally, I extend my heartfelt thanks to my family for supporting my lengthy, circuitous academic journey. I feel fortunate to have always had the support of my parents, Wayne and Stephanie Diederichs, to explore the world. Thank you for sending me abroad at eighteen to the Netherlands for a year, where I was equally fortunate to acquire a wonderful second family, Huigh and Sietske van der Mandele, who inspired in me a love of all things Dutch. My host brother, Joost, deserves a special thank you for spending his evenings as my Dutch teacher. To my dearest friends, Alana and Amanda, thank you for always listening. Thank you to my children, Maud and Henry, for the welcome distraction of your laughter while writing this dissertation. And to my husband, Jim, thank you so very much for insisting that I work on the topic that made my heart sing, and for finding ways for us to both dream big and still make it work wherever we are in the world. iv Abstract This study’s examination of popular Dutch and British juvenile literature in a comparative context from 1814-1879 has a threefold purpose: to understand how nineteenth-century European imperialist ideology was instilled and perpetuated in popular texts for youth before the peak of modern imperialism from 1880-1914; to address overlooked Dutch juvenile literature and the broader Dutch Empire outside of the Dutch East Indies in the nineteenth century; and to demonstrate how these texts not only promote paternalistic imperialism but also contain contradictions and gaps that work against their surface imperialist ideologies. Paternalistic imperialism in literature often employs family analogies of a benevolent father (country) deciding what is best for his dependent (colonial) children, framed in a way that offers shared humanity within the empire but also reinforces white European superiority over colonial others, especially in terms of appropriate conduct. Though paternalism is distasteful by modern standards, it was not perceived of as such in the nineteenth century, even preferred to the contemporary derisive understanding of humanitarianism as excessive sentimentality. Each chapter contrasts two popular novels, one British and one Dutch, which are representative of a typical juvenile genre from the time: domestic moral tales from the late 1810s by Barbara Hofland and Petronella Moens; early adventure novels from the 1840s by Frederick Marryat and A.E. van Noothoorn; and later adventure tales from the 1870s by R.M. Ballantyne and J.H. van Balen. These representative novels go beyond the typical critical geographic focus of British India and the Dutch East Indies by including content on Barbados, Suriname, the Cape Colony and South Africa, Sydney, the Seychelles, Zanzibar, and territories making up modern-day Sudan and Mozambique. With these locations, these novels also draw attention to the different abolition v priorities and timelines in both empires, underscoring slavery’s prominent role in informing and shaping contemporary perceptions of empire. To best identify imperialist ideologies in these popular juvenile novels, the focus is on prescribed appropriate conduct with colonial or foreign others, especially in encounters with (former) slaves. Despite the historical and political decline of the Dutch Empire at the time in comparison with the dominant British Empire, these novels show a similar cultural idea of national, paternalistic imperialism written for juvenile consumption. Though these texts appear straightforward, formulaic, and patronizing, they demonstrate continued merit due to the significant role popular juvenile literature played in substantiating imperialist ideologies. They merit even closer examination to witness how the process of materializing ideology within a textual format causes fissures in the very ideology they were striving to uphold. With this study finding Dutch novels employing similar strategies as British ones to further imperialism in popular culture, it confirms the Netherlands warrants inclusion in dialogue to understand the impact and long-lasting cultural significance of nineteenth-century European paternalistic imperialism, further indicating that neither the Dutch nor British Empires were as unique in their cultural approaches to imperialism as they claimed to be. It also contends that popular juvenile literature from 1814-1879 was instrumental in disseminating imperialist outlooks while also arguing for popular juvenile fiction’s significant, if subtle, part in weakening nineteenth- century imperialism as it moved toward its peak at the end of the century. vi Introduction Popular Dutch and British juvenile novels from the nineteenth century present didactic plots that frequently highlight the benefits of learning appropriate conduct or reforming inappropriate conduct. But these tales are more than entertaining fiction still trading on juvenile literature’s conduct-book origins.1 Rather, they are fundamental to instilling and perpetuating nineteenth- century imperialist ideologies in both countries, particularly fostering an increasing sense of paternalistic imperialism throughout the period. Paternalistic imperialism in literature often employs family analogies of a benevolent father (country) deciding what is best for his dependent (colonial) children, framed in a way that offers shared humanity within the empire but also reinforces white European superiority over colonial others, especially in terms of appropriate conduct. Though paternalism is distasteful by modern standards, it was not perceived of as such in the nineteenth century, even preferred to the contemporary derisive understanding of humanitarianism as excessive sentimentality.2 As this project investigates, nineteenth-century imperialist ideologies – here understood as the cultural instantiation of imperialism – become particularly visible, and problematic, through encounters and sanctioned conduct with foreign or colonial others,3 especially with (former) slaves. 1 Sylvia Kasey Marks, Writing for the Rising Generation: British Fiction for Young People 1672-1839 (Victoria, BC.: University of Victoria Department of English, 2004), 12; Dennis Butts, “Finding and Sustaining a Popular Appeal: The Case of Barbara Hofland,” in Popular Children’s Literature in Britain, ed. Julia Briggs, Dennis Butts, and Matthew Orville Grenby (Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2008), 115. 2 For paternalist, see Michael N Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2013), 233. For humanitarianism, see Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “humanitarianism,” accessed March 15, 2018, www.oed.com.proxy.uchicago.edu/view/Entry/272189. See chapter three of this project as well. 3 Elleke Boehmer contends that empire writing can slip and undercut itself when it comes under pressure “at moments of close interaction or involvement with individuals from other cultures and regions, or with those other cultures or regions more broadly,” Elleke Boehmer, Empire Writing: An Anthology of Colonial Literature, 1870-1918 (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), xxix. 1 The popular works examined here all contain gaps, silences, and outright contradictions, whether intentional or not,